16 June 2014

NYT: Goldman Sachs Divested From Alibaba Early: Video - Bloomberg: (Allow video to load after clicking play)Trish Regan, Matt Miller, Julie Hyman and Eric Chemi on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart.” (Source: Bloomberg, June 12)Google Skybox, Titan Aerospace acquisitions: Why it needs satellites and drones.: ".... It’s important to understand that Skybox is not just another satellite-imaging company. To fully grasp its potential—and its natural affinity with Google’s mission—you have to look more closely at what it was doing before Google bought it. Fortunately, we have a marvelously high-resolution snapshot in the form of an in-depth feature article that David Samuels wrote for Wired a year ago. The headline: “Inside a Startup’s Plan to Turn a Swarm of DIY Satellites Into an All-Seeing Eye.”...."China broadens crackdown on Google services - Los Angeles Times: "When Yi Ran is working on new designs for his Yinshen Clothing company, he often turns to Google to search for pictures to use as inspiration. "The results are more complete and objective than Chinese search services," says the 30-year-old from Guangzhou. But for the last two weeks, when Yi has tried to call up the U.S. search engine, it's been unavailable — as have a wide variety of other Google services, including Gmail, Google Books, Google Scholar and even country-specific search pages like google.de, the company's German home page.... certain Google services such as YouTube have been totally unavailable in China for years, and politically sensitive periods like the Tiananmen anniversary often bring intensified, if temporary, censorship of many foreign news websites and Internet search terms. But experts said the current broad-based and prolonged disruption of Google offerings seems to be an escalated — and possibly long-term — crackdown on the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant . . . . " (read more at link above)So Your Facebook Post Views Dropped, Huh?: "....In January, Facebook quietly made another change to their programming that has directly affected how Facebook Fan Pages connect with their customers. It turns out that most Facebook users want to see more pictures from their friend’s vacation and less sales messages. They want to click on more hamster videos and see fewer Fan Page marketing promotions...."A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic: "... Measuring and predicting individual purchases has never been easy. But measuring and predicting how everybody's purchase is affecting everybody else's shopping behavior in the Panopticon of the Internet is practically impossible. The Internet was supposed to tell us which ads work and which ads don't. Instead, it's flooded consumers' brains with reviews, comments, and other information that has diluted the power of advertising. The more we learn about how consumers make decisions, the more we learn we don't know."Google Fit: Another Try At Health Data?InformationWeekGoogle's ongoing competition with Apple to dominate the mobile device ... Microsoft could become a player in the mobile health data and device ...

Tim Cook, Making Apple His OwnNew York TimesTim Cook, Apple's chief executive, was an adolescent boy in a small Alabama town in the early 1970s when he saw something he couldn't forget.

Gillmor Gang: Apple Jack | TechCrunchBy Steve GillmorMany of us in the Apple Polishing business (I'm an unrepentant fanboy) remain enthralled by the details of iOS 8 ... The Gillmor Gang on Facebook.TechCrunch

By Douglas EhrmanHe argues that Tizen is too far behind Apple's (AAPL) iOS and Android to ever ... You may recall how absurd many analysts viewed Google's attempts to ... If Google management is as insightful as it has been in the past, it will not be ...SeekingAlpha.com: Home Page